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Five years on from Iraq's "endless war", plans for a permanent US presence in the Middle East have been defied - along with Washington's vision for the new American century.

28th May 08 - Michael Schwartz, TomDispatch.com

On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest President George W Bush's onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called "the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen".

Whatever history ultimately concludes about that unexpected moment of protest, once the war began, other forms of resistance arose - mainly in Iraq itself - that were equally unexpected. And their effects on the larger goals of Bush administration planners can be more easily traced. Think of it this way: in a land the size of California with but 26 million people, a ragtag collection of Ba'athists, fundamentalists, former military men, union organizers, democratic secularists, local tribal leaders and politically active clerics - often at each other's throats (quite literally) - nonetheless managed to thwart the plans of the self-proclaimed New Rome, the "hyperpower" and "global sheriff" of planet Earth. And that, even in the first glancing assessment of history, may indeed prove historic.

New American century goes missing in action
It's hard now even to recall the original vision Bush and his top officials had of how the conquest of Iraq would unfold as an episode in the president's "war on terror". In their minds, the invasion was sure to yield a quick victory, to be followed by the creation of a client state that would house crucial "enduring" US military bases from which Washington would project power throughout what they liked to term "the Greater Middle East".

In addition, Iraq was quickly going to become a free-market paradise, replete with privatized oil flowing at record rates onto the world market. Like falling dominos, Syria and Iran, cowed by such a demonstration of American might, would follow suit, either from additional military thrusts or because their regimes - and those of up to 60 countries worldwide - would appreciate the futility of resisting Washington's demands. Eventually, the "unipolar moment" of US global hegemony that the collapse of the Soviet Union had initiated would be extended into a "New American century" (along with a generational Pax Republicana at home).

This vision is now, of course, long gone, largely thanks to unexpected and tenacious resistance of every sort within Iraq. This resistance consisted of far more than the initial Sunni insurgency that tied down what former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld pridefully labeled "the greatest military force on the face of the Earth". It is already none too rash a statement to suggest that, at all levels of society, usually at great sacrifice, the Iraqi people frustrated the imperial designs of a superpower.

Consider, for example, the myriad ways in which the Iraqi Sunnis resisted the occupation of their country from almost the moment the Bush administration's intention to fully dismantle Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime became clear. The largely Sunni city of Fallujah, like most other communities around the country, spontaneously formed a new government based on local clerical and tribal structures.

Like many of these cities, it avoided the worst of the post-invasion looting by encouraging the formation of local militias to police the community. Ironically, the orgy of looting that took place in Baghdad was, at least in part, a consequence of the US military presence, which delayed the creation of such militias there. Eventually, however, sectarian militias brought a modicum of order even to Baghdad.

In Fallujah and elsewhere, these same militias soon became effective instruments for reducing, and - for a time - eliminating, the presence of the US military. For the better part of a year, faced with improvised explosive devices and ambushes from insurgents, the US military declared Fallujah a "no-go" zone, withdrew to bases outside the city, and discontinued violent incursions into hostile neighborhoods. This retreat was matched in many other cities and towns. The absence of patrols by occupation forces saved tens of thousands of "suspected insurgents" from the often deadly violence of home invasions, and their relatives from wrecked homes and detained family members.

Even the most successful of US military adventures in that period, the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, could also be seen, from quite a different perspective, as a successful act of resistance. Because the United States was required to mass a significant proportion of its combat brigades for the offensive (even transferring British troops from the south to perform logistical duties), most other cities were left alone. Many of these cities used this respite from the US military to establish, or consolidate, autonomous governments or quasi-governments and defensive militias, making it all the more difficult for the occupation to control them.

Fallujah itself was, of course, destroyed, with 70% of its buildings turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of its residents permanently displaced an extreme sacrifice that had the unexpected effect of taking pressure off other Iraqi cities for a while. In fact, the ferocity of the resistance in the predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq forced the American military to wait almost four years before renewing their initial 2004 efforts to pacify the well-organized Sadrist-led resistance in the predominantly Shi'ite areas of the country.

Rebellion of oil workers

In another arena entirely, consider the Bush administration's dreams of harnessing Iraqi oil production to its foreign policy ambitions. The immediate goals, as American planners saw it, were to double pre-war output and begin the process of transferring control of production from state ownership to foreign companies.

Three major energy initiatives designed to accomplish these goals have so far been frustrated by resistance from virtually every segment of Iraqi society. Iraq's well-organized oil workers played a key role in this by using their ability to bring production to a virtual standstill to abort the transfer - only a few months after the US toppled Saddam's regime - of the operation of the southern oil port of Basra to the management of then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

This and other early acts of labor defiance turned back the initial assault on the Iraqi government-controlled system of oil production. Such acts also laid a foundation for successful efforts to prevent the passage of oil policies shaped in Washington that were designed to transfer control of energy exploration and production to foreign companies. In these efforts, the oil workers were joined by both Sunni and Shi'ite resistance groups, local governments, and finally the new national parliament.

This same sort of resistance extended to the whole roster of neo-liberal reforms sponsored by the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). From the beginning of the occupation, for instance, there were protests against mass unemployment caused by the dismantling of the Ba'athist state and the shuttering of state-owned factories. Much of the armed resistance was a response to the occupation's early violent suppression of these protests.

Even more significant were local efforts to replace the government services discontinued by the CPA. The same local quasi-governments that had nurtured the militias sought to sustain or replace Ba'athist social programs, often by siphoning off oil destined for export onto the black-market to pay for local services, and hoarding local resources such as electrical generation. The result would be the creation of virtual city-states wherever US troops were not present, leading to the inability of the occupation to "pacify" any substantial portion of the country.

The Sadrist movement and the Mahdi Army militia of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was probably the most successful - and most anti-occupation - of the Shi'ite political parties-cum-militias that systematically sought to develop quasi-government organizations. 

They tried to meet, however minimally, some of the basic needs of their communities, supplying food baskets, housing services, and serving a host of other functions previously promised by the Ba'athist government, but forsworn by the US occupation and the Iraqi government that the US installed when "handing over" sovereignty in June 2004.

The American occupationaires expected that their plans for the rapid privatization and transformation of the state-driven economy would indeed generate resistance, but they were convinced that this would subside quickly once the new economy kicked into gear. Instead, as the occupation wore on, demands for relief grew more strident and insistent, while the country itself, in chaos and near collapse, became visible evidence of the failure of the Bush administration's "free market" policies.

An Iraqi agenda for withdrawal

Occupation officials faced the same dilemma in the political realm. The original goal of the Bush administration was a stable, pro-Washington government, stripped of its economic and political dominance over Iraqi society, but a bastion of resistance to Iranian regional power. This vision, like its military and economic cousins, has long since disappeared under the weight of Iraqi resistance.

Take, for example, the two high-profile Iraqi elections, celebrated in the mainstream American media as a unique Bush administration accomplishment in the otherwise relentlessly autocratic Middle East. Inside Iraq, however, they had quite a different look.

It is important to remember that the US initially planned to sustain its direct rule - the CPA - until the country was fully pacified and its economic reforms completed. When the CPA became a hated symbol of an unwanted occupation, planning shifted to the idea of installing an appointed Iraqi government, based on community meetings that only supporters of the occupation could attend. Full-scale elections would be postponed until winners fully supportive of the Bush agenda were assured. An outpouring of protest from the predominantly Shi'ite areas of the country, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, forced CPA administrators to move on to an election-based strategy.

The first election in January 2005 delivered a sizeable parliamentary majority voted in on platforms calling for strict timetables for a full US military withdrawal from the country. American representatives then forcefully pressured the newly installed cabinet to abandon this position.

The second parliamentary election in December 2005 followed a similar pattern. This time, the backroom bargaining was only partially effective. The newly installed prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, reneged on his campaign promises by publicly supporting an ongoing American military presence, which caused deep fissures in the ruling coalition.

After a year of unproductive negotiations, the 30 Sadrists in parliament, originally a key part of Maliki's ruling coalition, withdrew from both that coalition and the cabinet in protest over the prime minister's refusal to set a date for the end of the occupation. Subsequent parliamentary demands for a date certain for withdrawal were ignored by both the government and US officials. While Maliki continued in office without a parliamentary majority, the controversy contributed to the soaring popularity of the Sadrists and waning support for the other Shi'ite governing parties.

By early 2008, with provincial elections looming in November, there was little doubt that the Sadrists would sweep to power in many predominantly Shi'ite provinces, most critically Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and southern oil hub. To prevent this debacle, Iraqi government troops, supported and advised by the US military, sought to expel the Sadrists from key areas of Basra.

This use of military force to prevent electoral defeat was only one of many indications that the Iraqi government was feeling the pressure of public opinion. Another was the reluctance of Maliki to maintain an antagonistic stance toward Iran. Despite fervent Bush administration efforts, his government has promoted social, religious and economic relationships between Iraqis and Iranians.

These included facilitating visits to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf by hundreds of thousands of Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims, as well as supporting extensive oil transactions between Basra and Iranian firms, including distribution and refining services that promised to integrate the two energy economies. A formal military relationship between the two countries was vetoed by US authorities, but this did not reverse the tide of cooperation.

The river of resistance

As the occupation wore on, the Bush administration found itself swimming against a tide of resistance of a previously unimaginable sort, and ever further from its goals. Today, cities and towns around the country are largely under the sway of Shi'ite or Sunni militias which, even when trained or paid by the occupation, remain militantly opposed to the US presence. Moreover, though the prostrate Iraqi economy has been formally privatized, these local militias - and the political leaders they worked with - continue to raise demands for vast government-funded reconstruction and economic development programs.

The formal political leadership of Iraq, locked inside the heavily fortified, US-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, remains publicly compliant when it comes to Bush administration plans to transform Iraq into a Middle Eastern outpost - including the continued presence of American troops on a series of mega-bases in the heart of the country. The rest of the government bureaucracy and the bulk of Iraq's grass roots are increasingly insistent on an early American departure date and a full-scale reversal of the economic policies first introduced by the occupation.

In Washington, for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, the outpost idea remains at the heart of the policy agenda for Iraq in this election year, along with a neo-liberal economy featuring a modernized oil sector in which multinational firms are to use state-of-the-art technology to maximize the country's lagging oil production.

Iraqi resistance of every kind and on every level has, however, prevented this vision from becoming reality. Because of the Iraqis, the glorious sounding "war on terror" has been transformed into an endless, hopeless actual war.

But the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting. The invasion and the social and economic policies that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving its people essentially destitute. In the first five years of this endless war, Iraqis have suffered more for resisting than if they had accepted and endured American military and economic dominance. Whether consciously or not, they have sacrificed themselves to halt Washington's projected military and economic march through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a new American century that now will never be.

It is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance. Just as the worldwide protests before the war were among the upstream sources of the Iraqi resistance-to-come, so now others, especially Americans, should resist the very idea that Iraq could ever become the headquarters for a permanent US presence that would, in the words of Bush speechwriter David Frum, "Put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans." Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the citizens of the United States are uniquely positioned to bury this imperial dream for all time.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency. His forthcoming Tomdispatch book, War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context (Haymarket, June 2008) explores how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the US to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. His email address is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

(Copyright 2008 Michael Schwartz.)

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